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Introducing Patient Care Teams

PFC is one of the largest single-site fertility centers in the U.S. This offers many advantages, such as the ability to provide a full range of fertility services with constant physician coverage—7 days a week, 365 days a year. It also affords us the volume to adequately evaluate our success and outcomes on a timely basis.

Complementing the assets of PFC's size, we are currently introducing Patient Care Teams to provide even more personalized, coordinated services. Each of our 6 physicians will now head a Patient Care Team, a dedicated team of staff devoted to that doctor's patients.

Most of PFC's clinical staff—those primarily responsible for patient care—will be a part of one of these teams and will become familiar with our patients and their specific treatment plan. Each Patient Care Team includes the following staff members:

• New patient coordinator
• Clinical nurse coordinator
• Floor nurse
• Medical assistant(s)

The new patient coordinators are responsible for helping new patients by:

• Scheduling telephone or in-person appointments with a physician
• Obtaining medical records for the physician consultation
• Helping them navigate the process of becoming a PFC patient

Once the PFC reproductive endocrinologist has seen and evaluated a new patient and developed a treatment plan, a clinical nurse coordinator arranges and coordinates the patient’s plan.

The clinical nurse coordinator speaks to the new patient by telephone or in person, whichever is preferred by the patient, and:

• Helps to arrange for any new necessary lab tests
• Makes a treatment schedule
• Organizes medication prescriptions
• Arranges for patients to come to a class for their particular treatment (such as IUI or IVF orientation or injection instruction)

The clinical nurse coordinator will clear the patient to enter into the treatment cycle once all the preparatory orientations are complete and any outstanding lab work is finished.

Once “in cycle” and undergoing treatment, patients will see their doctor for all appointments and will become familiar with their doctor’s floor nurse and medical assistants. These staff follow the patients closely during their treatment and during the first few weeks of pregnancy.

We believe that Patient Care Teams will go a long way toward streamlining patient care and making it easier for both staff and patients to more easily communicate with and get to know each other. And, we think this can only make the experience at PFC that much more rewarding.

- Carolyn Givens, MD
PFC Physician

View Dr. Givens' Google+ Page »

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